In this case study

The way we view object storage solutions and performance requirements has evolved over the past few years. Companies are turning to these cost-effective solutions to address an increasing number of use cases, creating a bigger demand for object storage than we've ever seen in the past.

With new requirements presented by the lines of business, the IT department of a national Financial Services Holding Company needed to evaluate next-generation storage solutions. They needed a cost-effective, flexible archival solution that would reduce the current amount of primary and backup data.

Current storage environment

The organization offers a wide range of financial services, including retail and commercial banking, investments, insurance, wealth management, asset management, mortgages, corporate banking, capital markets and specialized lending – creating a large demand for storage capabilities within their IT infrastructure. The customer operated with three separate storage vendors for Tier 1/2 SAN, NAS, Tier 3/4 SAN and Mainframe storage.

Internally, they identified several use cases in which cold data – call recordings, images, snapshot, backup offload – were consuming expensive primary storage and would be better suited to archive on object storage, providing significant cost savings.

Their main objective was to take any data off primary storage that can effectively perform on object storage, a less expensive option. However, the customer had no prior experience with object storage platforms. 

Object storage lab services

We provided a crash course in object storage solutions with a Data Protection Workshop and Object Storage Workshop. These sessions helped differentiate the numerous OEMs in the market and highlight the customer's use cases where object storage made the most sense.

We also performed a customized proof of concept in the Advanced Technology Center (ATC) with the customer's storage architect, VP of emerging services and VP of storage.

This proof of concept offered the customer an opportunity to gain confidence and working knowledge of object/S3 functionality across the specified OEMs and determine which technology was most appropriate for their environment.

An independent evaluation ensured that the vendors were evaluated fairly against the customer's requirements. Ultimately, NetApp StorageGrid stood out as a software-defined object storage solution that offered several unique distinctions:

  • dynamic policy technology;
  • layered erasure coding and support for both data replication and erasure coding; and
  • fabric pools that can be leveraged with the customer's existing NetApp storage for automated storage tiering.

Next steps

Pre-sales consulting and lab services from WWT helped identify NetApp StorageGrid as a cost-effective solution that can meet the customer's performance needs with data that lives both on-premises and in the public cloud.

Our established object storage practice and extensive lab capabilities provided the foundation needed for making this decision. WWT stands ready to help the customer expand their use cases, as well as integrate new technologies as they become available.

Ready to evaluate your storage options? Schedule a workshop with our experts.

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